Pics!!!

Here's some pics from NJ! We are having so much fun here...we love it!!!!!!!!!

Gobble Gobble Gobble

Happy Turkey Day! We're headed out in the morning for our very 1st road trip. Wish us luck! It'll be our 1st time staying away from home except for when we stay at Grandma Lucco's house. Mommy & daddy say the hotel is going to be very nice and it has a pool so hopefully we get to go swimming and meet some nice people! We'll tell you all about it when we get back.
Love,
Hannah, Hailey & Emily

Hannah's boo boo pic

Trip to the ER

Here's the story on the 365 blog. Too much to post twice!
http://365daysinourshoes.blogspot.com/

All better

We are all better now. No more ear infections.

I'm all better now.

Emily

You guessed it...she didn't want to be left out of the sick mess they've all created. Up all night, threw up on me twice and now just hanging out waiting to go to the doctor.

Hannah

She has her very 1st ear infection (yes...just one day after Hailey - we had to bring Hannah to the doctor for the same sypmtoms). :-(

Hailey

She has her 1st ear infection. :-(

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy Birthday Cousin Christina! We love you and miss you so very much!!!!

Update on the trio

Ok - so Hannah woke up with the runny nose that Emily has been sporting the past few days. BUT - they slept through the night last night. I'm sure Hailey won't be too far behind on the cold wagon but hopefully it's JUST a cold and nothing else. The girls didn't get their H1N1 vaccines but they did get the seasonal flu vaccine. I'm hoping the doctors office has the H1N1 in this week. We held off on the vaccine last visit but now we've changed our minds (after doing more research)...and now they're out of the vaccine...lol.

We have the appt with the head surgeon on Friday for Emily and Hailey. Pete and I really haven't talked about it much. I think we're both pretty nervous about the whole thing. So much going on lately and this appt just crept up on us out of nowhere. We want to go away for Thanksgiving - but we might be sticking around nursing some post op children. We'll see.

Emily is talking more and more these days. She isn't 'using' her words - but she's repeating EVERYTHING! When I found out someone stole all 6 of our pumpkins (even the one's that they decorated with stickers and had their names on them in beautiful calligraphy thanks to Kristin) I said 'I'm so mad!' And Emily says 'Uh oh, Mama mad, uh oh'. It's cute. But really - I wasn't happy about the whole pumpkins being stolen. Grrrrrr. Punk kids. We even handed out candy on Halloween! We found the pumpkins...smashed to smithereens along with everyone else's pumpkins in the neighborhood. For some reason I'm finding it hard to move on from this...but I'll keep trying.

They can all JUMP off the ground! I'm proud of this...I don't know why but I am. Also - Pete bought them some flash cards last week and they're really getting good at identifying the pictures on the cards. We ask if they can find something and they sort through all of the cards and find it.

It's hard to know where they should be scholastically(?) and what they should/shouldn't be able to do. We only have the 3 of them and they're not in school/daycare. So we do a lot of reading and sometimes I feel like they're way more advanced in some areas and way behind in others. So we're working on the areas that we think they're behind.

Do we worry about anything specifically? Probably not. If I had to blurt out only one thing I worry about in excess it would be their health. They get a cold and I turn into the worst worrying mama ever. Do they have a fever? A rash? A cough? Is Hannah going to get croup again? Will Emily ever lapse back into her apnea episodes from a lowered immune system while she's sick? Will Hailey stop eating and lose weight (which she already can't afford to do!)? But I think this is all 'normal'. Every mom worries. Every mom wants the best for their kids and doesn't want to see them miserable. At least that's the way it works in our house anyway!

Oh and for the record...they ALL have daddy wrapped around their tiny little fingers.
Every. Single. One.

They're still in cribs and we've decided to keep them in their cribs until they figure out that it would be pretty easy for them to just climb out. Once they do that...we'll put their crib mattresses on the floor and take everything out of their room except bedding. They can have a field day at bed time - eventually they'll fall asleep right?

Their car seats are still rear facing. They can climb up into their seats by themselves so it's a game now - they get in the van and they get into whatever seat they want. They like to switch it up so lately they've all been in different seats. We can't turn Hannah and Hailey around yet because they're not yet 20lbs. Now the new recommendation is to keep them rear facing until they're 4 years old. We'll see how that goes...

We haven't started potty training yet. I think we'll buy them some potty seats for xmas and start orienting them to the idea gradually.

I guess that's it for now...(are you even still reading this long post?).

Pics

Here are some pics with the family. Things are going well - but Emily has a cold right now. We're hoping this isn't the beginning of a messy few weeks with 3 sick kids. I feel like we just got over having them all sick!

Moms ranting again

Where to begin? Pete and I miss our lives before kids. We love our lives now. But we miss our 'life'. Our life now consists of - well...babies and being parents. That's a whole lot of responsibilty. Neither one of us could have imagined the amount of responsibility one takes on when being a parent. There's ups and downs and with each other - we'll pull through it. But some days are so much harder than others.

The girls have learned that they now have 'choices'. It makes it hard on us because they only choose 'no'. That's it. Whatever it is...they don't want it or they don't want to do it. And they fight every step of the way. Changing them is a nightmare. Getting them in their pj's at night...same nightmare. But for some reason - they love to get dressed in the morning. I don't get it. I know it's just a phase...but Lord this phase is killing me. The whining. OMG the whining. I don't do whining...really really really don't do whining. It eats at me - sends my blood pressure through the roof and just makes my hair stand up. I feel like I'm constantly saying 'use your words please' over and over again. And you know...they don't really have words! But I sure wish they'd find them and use them. It's the guessing game right now. "You want this? No. You want that? No. This? That? Oh! You want this!!!!!!" Grrrrrr.

Sleeping in is a thing of the past. Even if one of us is able to stay in bed - we can't really sleep. Nights out - forget it. We're either home with the girls or too tired to go anywhere anyway.

This isn't a complaint - just part of our life. We both just sat here and read through some of the older posts in the blog and I was thinking...'wow - there's nothing in there about how HARD it is sometimes'. It's no wonder people don't get it. We don't tell them. Of course you don't want people to know you're having a bad day. Those are the things people want to hear about. They want to know that our girls are sleeping through the night and eating well. That they're happy and healthy. Yes, yes, yes and yes to all 4 of those things. But you know - they cry. They whine. They fight. They slap the shit out of me everyday and I do nothing at all about it. Not even time outs. Because I choose not to fight that battle. They hardly ever lay down on the chaning table to be changed without being forced or held down. It usually takes 2 of us to get Emily in her pj's at night.

Today was a good day. You'd never know it by this blog. But it was a good day. The girls got along, Emily didn't bite anyone (that's not to say she didn't try), we got some laundry done, went grocery shopping, cooked a few meals, even sat and played with playdough, went for a long walk....it was a really good day.

But a good day can turn sour in 2 seconds and when you have 3 screaming toddlers - that's all it takes to make you forget you've had a good day. After their bath we had to cut their nails. All 60 of them. 30 toes, 30 fingers. It takes 2 of us and we could probably use a third. They didn't fight too hard tonight but they resisted. Then it was time for pj's. Emily just wasn't having it. She did everything in her power to keep from getting dressed. She twists, turns, screams, bites, hits, and even lets her whole body go limp. This really just gets to me. THEY'RE PJ'S. WE DO THIS EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. And yet she acts like we're tourturing her. Grrrrr

I finally took her bunny away and gave the other 2 theirs. They were in the pj's. I told Emily if she wanted her bunny - put her pj's on and she'd get it. She did...with a lot less resistance. And I gave her the bunny.